


you said forever, tell me why can't you stay?

by theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Unreliable Narrator, commitment issues, hes a poet he cant help it, i tag as such because of who jaskier is as a person, jaskier being melodramatic to the extreme, just barely, post episode 6 fix-it, sort of stream of consciousness?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22259698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes/pseuds/theredtailedhawkwithjewelsforeyes
Summary: He’s had one hundred best friends and he has no doubt he’ll have a hundred more, and while he gives them his whole heart each and every time it’s not a tragedy to part. Some people love, love, love, and they like to cling, and Jaskier hates the feeling of being weighted down.The Witcher is different.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 58
Kudos: 517
Collections: Abby's Witcher Collection





	you said forever, tell me why can't you stay?

**Author's Note:**

> jaskier is the most melodramatic person in the world which i take from my own personal habit of spinning everything into a tragedy!! if you saw this earlier its because i took it down and posted it again because it made my hands sweat bc i thought people wouldnt like it. but consider this: please 
> 
> title from drunken lament by ludo

Jaskier doesn’t spend a lot of time looking back. He likes to be present, be now, be the happiest he’s ever been right in this moment even though, it must be said, often his _now_ is by all means miserable. His songs are made up on the spot, scribbled down, played for a laugh and a coin and replaced. His notebooks are burned when he fills them. Jaskier doesn’t _do_ sentiment like he thinks a lot of people might, even though he loves everything that he comes across so terribly- they’re temporary, is the thing, and Jaskier knows it, and Jaskier is so very content to live and love and forget all about it tomorrow. 

Patched up clothes, then, not because he has attachment to the pretty pale blue doublet- if someone offered him a dark green he’d be pleased to cast it aside. Ruined clothes means he’ll have to buy some more. Boots with a hole in them, even boots that lasted him through the year- they aren’t kept. They aren’t mourned. His lute, even, nominally his most prized possession, is just a thing. People, too. He’s had one hundred best friends and he has no doubt he’ll have a hundred more, and while he gives them his whole heart each and every time it’s not a tragedy to part. Some people love, love, love, and they like to cling, and Jaskier hates the feeling of being weighted down. 

A traveling bard, never lonely, never bored, never keeping company for too long. Tearing through towns like a whirlwind, causing chaos- he won’t flatter himself to think that people remember him apart from his music, and that’s fine. 

The Witcher is different. 

Jaskier had intended, of course, to stick around for maybe a week. Fall in love, because he always does, find the good in those gold eyes, write a song. And he’d just kept making excuses. Plodding in the dusty footprints of a Witcher and his horse, singing, plucking, staying. 

And then they part, and Jaskier is relieved, because he can go back to forgetting, flitting right back through life like he was meant to. 

But he thinks about the Witcher- Geralt. His friend the white wolf of Rivia, who’s gruff and smells of onion and has hands that are shocking gentle, besides the sword callouses. His friend who hates company, who maybe doesn’t feel anything, who isn’t a human, really- his friend who sticks like a burr in Jaskier’s damn heart and his damn head. He doesn’t understand it- he drinks and he sings and his songs keep trailing back to their- well, Geralt’s, really- adventures, and he can hardly write a new one without stumbling over the Witcher’s name. 

Jaskier didn’t spend a lot of time looking back, but now when he dreams he dreams of elves, being bound against a strong back, Geralt’s voice (always so steady, always with the hint of a growl) saying “let the bard go”. It’s fucking annoying, is what it is, because he’s meant to be free of all that- he makes friends, forgets them. Falls and love and leaves them behind. Dandelion yellow fading and sprouting again next summer, different creature, different soul. Always cheery, never permanent.

Jaskier didn’t spend a lot of time looking back. He _doesn’t_ spend a lot of time looking back. He keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the future and pretends like he doesn’t have a past like he’d never had to before. It’s very tiring, always remembering to forget, but he does it. He forces new songs, pushes cheer into his voice. 

Runs into Geralt again, in an inn, and despite himself sticks to his side like glue. 

Silly. He doesn’t like to talk to the same friends twice, because so often they’re all bogged down in what happened and why’d he leave, and they’re so fond of him in a way that new friends can’t be, but. Geralt keeps his eyes fixed ahead. Grunts out a hmm. Smells just the same as when he’d left. Sticks around and leaves again, and Jaskier feels it just as acutely at the first time. 

But he can’t forget, apparently. Can’t stop himself from getting attached, which he’s never had a problem with before. 

(When Jaskier was ten years old, he was a sad nobleman’s son. When he was eleven, he’d been sent to boarding school. When he was twelve, he’d left it all behind except for a stolen lute.)

They meet again. Again. He grows so fond he aches with it even when he’d alone. He doesn’t tell Geralt, of course, because it’s- well, it’s not like him, first of all, and Jaskier keeps hoping it’ll go away, or maybe that they just won’t meet again. Prays for it, really, because _gods_ , it’s tiring. It feels like he’s carrying his affection on his back like a fucking boulder. Useless and exhausting and painful. Who is Geralt? Just a man, for all he looks so other, and he’s hammered out a home right where Jaskier doesn’t want him. He’s not sure, at first, why Geralt lets him stick around, either. He doesn’t seem too terribly sentimental himself, but for his horse and his worn clothes- and then Jaskier get to see his soft heart, all tucked away behind his gravel and glares, and knows he’s made a home for himself in Geralt too. 

Jaskier thinks it’s the worst thing he could imagine, to depend on someone like this. He worries and his nights are lonely and when he’s away, he always finds his way right back, and-

He’s wrong. 

-

Needing someone isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Needing someone and not being able to have them is worse. 

Jaskier knows- he fucking knows, he’s not an idiot- that Geralt’s had a bad day, with Yennefer and the old guy who died and didn’t die, and, yeah, he shouldn’t’ve poked, really, but when has he ever known what’s good for himself? 

So he pokes the bear. 

The bear swipes. 

Jaskier is left alone. 

Jaskier has a lot of practice being alone. He has a lot of practice at not looking back. He has a lot of practice packing up, moving on, forgetting, finding happiness some other far away place. When he sulks it’s over something current, and when he cries it’s never about something that’s over with, and he is crying now, without quite knowing why. 

The end of an era, he supposes. Sentiment catching up to him. The Witcher buried in his heart digging his way free. He drinks, tries to forget about what’s making him so damn sad- when did he hang his everything on one man? He’d thought, foolishly, that the way this would end would be in death, one way or another, but this, parting ways with both bleeding but alive, is so much worse. 

He is very lonely because he is alone. There is a difference between being lonely with a friend far off and lonely with only passing relationships left in his dusty footprints. Wandering and never finding a soul that connects with his is stomach-clenching instead of freeing how it used to be, and he is sick and sad and empty. 

His love used to be quick and ever-changing, one flower dying and a field popping up next spring, but now it feels like spring won’t come. 

Silly, silly bard. Prone to his melancholies and melodramas and adventures and so certain that it would never catch up to him. Jaskier realizes, on his back in a quiet room, that he had put up his nose at people just like him- just, they’d found their reason earlier in life. Or they’d been stronger and braver than him. 

His songs are plucked out and sad and lonely. 

It’s fine. He’ll move on, and if he doesn’t…

Well.

-

Jaskier is sitting in a bar, lute in his lap, eyes fixed on the notebook in front of him. He is lonely in a calloused over, aching way- his smile is forced much of the time. He has made friends, lost them, and he cannot bring himself to care like he knows now he’s capable of.

-

Jaskier has known hurt before. Temporary, self destructive, but not so deep and low, stone in his belly, tacks in his shoes. Scrapes and tears and hunger pangs- bright and sharp, lovely as sunshine in its own way. This is ugly, though- a mournful howl, cracking on the end. In the distance, healed over, still aching like a bad leg in the rain. 

Silly bard. He has always been so prone to his melancholies and melodramas and adventures. Why did he invest himself into something that wasn’t permanent?

-

When the Witcher comes again, Jaskier is sitting cross-legged on a table, picking at his lute. His clothes are pretty and his hair is washed and he sees a kind of tiredness in his eyes when he looks in the mirror. He is unhappy and it is the only comfortable permanence he has. 

The Witcher sits down in front of him, a solid mass in a transient tavern. He watches, takes Jaskier in, and his gold eyes are prickling and familiar. He says: “I missed you.” 

“I doubt you even can,” says Jaskier, cruelly. He knows it’s not true. 

“Hmm,” Geralt says- and then quiet, and then again (steady and sure as ever): “I missed you.” 

The voice of a friend. One who hurt him and one who has not left after all. Jaskier lets his shoulders drop, slowly. “I hope,” he says, slowly, “you have a better apology planned.” 

When he glances up, he sees just the faintest hint of a smile curl those familiar lips. 

-

Jaskier doesn’t spend a lot of time looking back. He sits side by side with the White Wolf of Rivea, breathes in sweat and leather and onion. Not pleasant except in that it makes muscles long since tense ease, makes him feel like a night spent by the crackling fire. Not looking back, just a soft sort of recall. He doesn’t say how he has spent a year trying to figure out how to be alone again and Geralt tells him, haltingly, how he had regretted what he said the moment he had said it. Jaskier closes his eyes and plays him a song that’s mournful as a distant wolf’s howl. 

It’s what they know. It’s what they are. Dramatic and closed off the both of them. 

They will try. 

-

Jaskier doesn’t spend a lot of time looking back. He looks forward, to friends he will make and a friend he will keep forever. He looks to a night spent in an inn, sweat and body-heat and popping fire. He looks to arguments and spats and coming back like magnets. He looks to terrible, lovely, perfect permanence. 

**Author's Note:**

> some notes:
> 
> i tagged it unreliable narrator because like…….. its the lots of metaphors. jaskier is not carrying a boulder in his backpack but god does it FEEL like it!!!!! i love him so much and he is genuinely in so much pain from losing, like, the only person he properly cared about, but he cannot help but make it flowery. king
> 
> geralt deliberated on what to say for a whole year and came up with ‘i missed you’ and it WORKED. he said other things but come ON. stan
> 
> this is nominally for sarah who commented “Also, since you asked for prompts, I’ve been craving some kind of reconciliation/apology scene after that breakup in episode 6” except uh. its mostly about jaskier being angsty so im sorry. leave me more prompts tho ;)
> 
> if you liked this please leave a comment they nourish me like a hearty broth on an empty stomach. a fresh fruit pie from the hand of the person you love most in the world which for me is U love u xx
> 
> ALSO shoot me a prompt or smth on tumblr at redjewelsforeyes.tumblr.com i will worship the ground you stand on


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